Dissertation Title: Adult Second Language Acquisition in Immigrant Communities: A Study on Bengali-English in East London

Linguistic Field(s):
Language Acquisition
Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): English (ENG)

Dissertation Director:
Max W Wheeler
Nicola J Woods

Dissertation Abstract:

This thesis investigates the acquisition of English morphosyntax by a community of immigrants from Bangladesh in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets. I approach the topic from several linguistic disciplines: syntax, by describing learners' syntactic development; psycholinguistics; by investigating psychological aspects which may influence the acquisition process; and sociolinguistics, by evaluating the influence of social factors on the development of learners' interlanguages.

In chapter 2, I provide an introduction to the Bengali community in Tower Hamlets, by outlining the history of the Bengali settlement in London and the social and economic situation the community faces today. Chapter three discusses relevant literature from all three disciplines concerned with this study. In chapter 4, I address the methodology of the study. I describe and evaluate the different methodological procedures employed for the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data.

In chapter 5, I analyse the acquisition of 6 morphosyntactic structures of English by 12 respondents: copular verbs, auxiliary verbs, full verbs, pronouns, prepositions and determiners. I identify several developmental stages of acquisition and describe their characteristics. Furthermore, I evaluate possible linguistic interference effects of both the learners' first language Sylheti and the London vernacular.

Chapter 6 assesses learners' second language proficiency with regard to how close informants' proficiency is to the target variety, that is, the London vernacular.

In chapter 7 I explore in detail the influence of various extra-linguistic variables onto learners' English language proficiency, amongst them age of arrival, lengths of residence and contact with (native) speakers of English.

Based on a second survey, chapter 8 discusses findings on language use and ethnolinguistic vitality. In addition to quantitative data, qualitative data is taken into account in order to explain respondents' motivations for language use.

I conclude in chapter 9 that second language acquisition in immigrant communities should be considered a multi-dimensional process, with acquisition being subject to a complex system of intertwining variables.